UC Irvine officials on Friday were attempting to broker a deal to once
again hire liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its fledging
law school, just three days after its chancellor set off a national
furor by dumping him.

Prominent Orange County attorney Tom Malcolm, a participant in
high-level university discussions, said: "I think we are satisfied that
if [UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Chemerinsky] have a meeting,
they can come to some understanding, and [Chemerinsky] can become a
good dean...."

An agreement would be an extraordinary development after Chemerinsky
contended this week that Drake succumbed to political pressure from
conservatives and sacked him because of his outspoken liberal
positions. The flap threatened to derail the 2009 opening of the law
school and prompted some calls for Drake's resignation.

Also Friday, details emerged about the criticism of Chemerinsky that
the university received in the days before Drake rescinded the job
offer, including from California Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who
criticized Chemerinsky's grasp of death penalty appeals. Also, a group
of prominent Orange County Republicans and Los Angeles County
Supervisor Mike Antonovich wanted to derail the appointment....

Any deal would therefore require Chemerinsky to "successfully
transition from being a very outspoken advocate on many causes to being
a dean of the stature that we expect in a start-up law school," said
Malcom, a prominent Orange County Republican who was going to be a
member of Chemerinsky's advisory board....

Drake acknowledged that Chemerinsky had attracted significant
opposition from conservatives, but he would not name the people who had
contacted him. He said that their complaints were not the cause for his
decision to terminate the dean.The criticism included a letter from the
California Supreme Court criticizing a Chemerinsky opinion piece in The
Times.

In an interview Friday, George said Chemerinsky made a "gross error"
that was "very troubling" to the court in an Aug. 16 article that
criticized U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Drake offered him the
job that same day.

George, an appointee of Gov. Pete Wilson, said that Chemerinsky wrote
incorrectly that only one state, Arizona, provided lawyers for death
row inmates who want to file a constitutional challenge, known as a
habeas corpus petition, to have their sentences or convictions
overturned.

George said he was surprised Chemerinsky would make such a mistake. The
court asked Court Clerk Frederick K. Ohlrich to write a letter to the
editor to The Times to correct the piece.

"None of us could understand how somebody, let alone someone who
is very bright and a fine legal scholar, could get that wrong," George
said. "It had nothing to do with his philosophy. I certainly feel he is
an outstanding legal scholar and a fine advocate."

The Times has no record of the letter being received as a letter to the editor or as a request for correction....

[Chemerinsky] stood by his article. "My op-ed was accurate in saying
California does not comply with the federal standards for providing
counsel to those on death row in their post-conviction proceedings, and
Arizona is the only state deemed in federal district court to have met
the federal standards."

Michael Schroeder, one of Orange County's most powerful GOP
political players, said a group of 20 prominent Republicans organized
against Chemerinsky in recent weeks, believing him to be a "longtime
partisan gunslinger" and too "polarizing" for the job.

Another member of the group, who asked not to be identified, said
Drake's cellphone number was distributed so the protesters could call
the chancellor.

Antonovich said he too worked to derail the appointment by sending an
e-mail to a small group of supporters and urging them to contact the
university....

[N]ow [Chancellor] Drake is fighting for survival, which depends in large part on whether he can regain the confidence of the UCI faculty.

Part of Drake's problem is that he appears to have given conflicting
reasons for his decision, at one point apparently attributing it to
expected opposition by the UC Board of Regents when it was to meet next
week.

Members of the board, however, said they were unaware of any opposition to Chemerinsky's hiring.

Given the facts that are now coming out--which make clear that the Chancellor (his increasingly incredible protestations to the contrary notwithstanding) caved into the most venal kind of political pressure from partisan hacks outside the university--it's getting hard to see why anyone would want this job.

UPDATE: Those who thought that brainless neanderthals were strictly a phenomenon of "fly over" territory ought to take note of the really remarkable performance by Michael Antonovich, the Los Angeles County Supervisor, who was one of those trying to derail the Chemerinsky appointment:

Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school
"would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security,"
Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of
Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.

He was not available for further comment on why he was
getting involved in the situation at a campus located outside his
jurisdiction in Orange County.

Antonovich's e-mail "expressed his dismay with the choice for
the dean of the law school and suggested that this was the wrong
decision and it should be changed," said Tony Bell, a spokesman for the
supervisor.

Antonovich, a local GOP stalwart, was first elected in 1980.
He is a staunch conservative who has supported crackdowns on illegal
immigrants, and voted against tax increases and HIV-prevention programs
that distribute free syringes.

He clashed with Chemerinsky in the past when the professor supported the removal of a cross from the county seal.